Mission-oriented innovation policy and regional hierarchy: a structural critique

Abstract Mission-oriented innovation policy (MOIP) may be structurally predisposed to generate territorial imbalances, not through inattention to geography but through the internal logic of what missions require. We identify three structural trade-offs that help explain why. The focus that makes missions effective conflicts with the diffusion that place-based equity requires. The acceleration that gives missions their momentum tends to outpace the absorptive capacity of lagging regions. And the directionality that sustains mission commitment sits uneasily with the territorial adaptability that place-sensitive governance demands. We argue that these tensions impose a structural ceiling on how far better design can reconcile mission effectiveness with spatial balance. Improved governance can move outcomes along the frontier, but it cannot dissolve the trade-off, because the concentration of resources that makes missions effective is the same concentration that reinforces the regional hierarchy. If missions succeed, their benefits risk concentrating in already-strong cores; if they fail, the result may be little more than an expensive urban stimulus program. Either way, the regional hierarchy risks being reinforced. Confronting these trade-offs honestly is a precondition for more territorially informed innovation policy.